


lying in the gutter, aiming for the moon

by taizi



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Deviates From Canon, Established Relationship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Kid Fic, Light Angst, M/M, Minor Injuries, Original Character(s), World of Ruin, and gladio and ignis are no help, basically prompto has a lot of shit to deal with, mentions of the ot4
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-23
Updated: 2018-05-30
Packaged: 2019-05-10 11:28:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14736116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taizi/pseuds/taizi
Summary: Prompto is better when he’s busy, so he pours all of his time and energy into the constant relief efforts, and hunting daemons, and helping displaced refugees make a new home in fortified Lestallum. Ignis and Gladio don’t have much to say to him anymore, but that’s alright -- he can take care of himself.And if this little kid has nobody else and nowhere to go, then Prompto can take care of him, too.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> this probably won't be very long, but !! i had to get it written down 
> 
> title borrowed from up&up by coldplay

 

There’s a light ahead, filtering through the trees, that looks like it belongs to thunder bombs.

Prompto gives his partner a nod, watching after him as Ace moves ahead soundlessly to take point. Then he turns to face the group of world-weary refugees he’s helping escort through a once-idyllic countryside to the safety of Lestallum.

They’re clustered beside an outcropping of rock, as much shelter as there is to be had out here anymore, and their lights and voices are low -- strained with exhaustion, and the worry bordering on paranoia that’s kept them alive until now. Every one of them has noticed the light ahead, too. At this leg of the journey, Prompto doesn’t need to tell anyone to be still and quiet.

He can afford to give them a few more minutes. The terrain is rough for civilians, and as much as he wants to get them behind city walls as soon as possible, he doesn’t want to deliver them half-dead on their feet.

It’s the work of a moment to sweep through a quick headcount, to make sure everyone’s accounted for -- and then Prompto pauses, frowning, and counts again.

“We’re missing someone,” he says. His voice isn’t loud, but it cuts through the absolute stillness like a knife anyway. He shelves the immediate alarm, refusing to act on it just yet.

Sometimes this happens -- someone steps away for a moment of privacy, to be sick or catch their breath, despite the endless warnings Prompto will have given them along the way to _never_ step away without letting him or his partner know.

But no one pipes up with a “my sister is just over there,” or “my husband needed a minute, he’ll be along right away” and that means they have a problem. Prompto watches as the people react to his words -- some of them look alarmed, and reach out reflexively to seize their friends, or their children, or their lovers, and hold them close against a similar fate.

But some of them don’t react at all, staring hard at their hands or away at the ground. It’s those people that Prompto moves in on.

His heavy boots step soundlessly through the forest litter, in the way that was ruthlessly trained into him by necessity and survival, and Prompto crouches in front of a sallow-faced man with a teen tucked under his arm.

There’s a cold pit opening in Prompto’s chest, at the idea of one of his people hurt or lost or _gone._

“It’s my job to get everyone safely from point A to point B,” Prompto says plainly. “You _really_ don’t want to get between me and my job.”

It’s as much of a threat as it needs to be. The man swallows once, twice, throat bobbing. Then he says, “The blond boy hurt his ankle. He fell behind a little while ago.”

Prompto jerks upright, and turns on his heel to scan the group again. His earlier alarm is crawling down off its shelf and taking up shop in the middle of his chest.

There should be a little boy, with uneven hanks of pale hair and big reproachful gray eyes. He had been walking with a little girl his age, and Prompto had assumed they were friends or siblings, that the girl’s mother would be keeping an eye on him -- but when Prompto’s gaze finds the woman, she’s clutching her daughter with a look of horror on her face.

“I didn’t realize,” she whispers. “I didn’t know.”

Ace is at his shoulder the moment Prompto spins around to look for him. He says, “Go ahead,” and his voice is as tight and angry as Prompto’s probably would be if Prompto could even _speak_. “I’ll call you back on the radio if I need you.”

So Prompto lifts his gun and plunges away into the dark, back the way they came. He’s searching the ground so hard he would probably walk right into an iron giant before he noticed it was in his way. He hasn’t prayed to the Astrals since they took Noctis away, but he finds himself throwing words up to any of the Six that might listen -- please, he’s just a kid, please, I’ll watch him closer next time, _please --_

Gladio says Prompto cares too much. Prompto doesn’t know why he says it like that, like it’s something Prompto can change, like it’s a dial that he can turn down.

But after hardly ten minutes of backtracking, he finds the boy -- tucked up under some foliage, his back to the trunk of a tree. He’s clutching his ankle, and his eyes are wide and terrified, but he’s alive. Somehow, all on his own out here in the daemon-infested night, he’s okay.

Prompto feels lightheaded with relief, closing his eyes for a second and breathing through it.

Then he shoves his gun back into its holster and kneels, offering the little guy his hands.

“Sorry,” he says, scraping up a smile. “It must have been scary. How about you walk with me from now on?”

The boy hardly needs any coaxing to spill forward into Prompto’s arms, clutching at him with shaking fingers. He’s cold, and Prompto manages to maneuver his jacket off without dislodging him, wrapping it around the boy’s thin shoulders.

The ordeal must have worn him out, because he dozes off there against Prompto’s chest as they pick their way back to the group.

Whole pounds of tension go out of Ace’s shoulders when he sees Prompto and his little charge, lines of worry easing out of his dark face.

“Thank the gods,” he murmurs.

“Or something,” Prompto replies. Then he turns sharp eyes on the people behind him, mouth working furiously as he tries to come up with a way to explain to them succinctly just how _fucked up_ he thinks this whole thing was.

“It’s not our job to babysit orphans,” someone pipes up. They don’t sound cruel, they just sound tired. They have a little boy of their own on their lap. “We have to look after our own family first, don’t we?”

Maybe Prompto would have said something different two years ago. He was kinder back then, he thinks. Or the world was kinder.

But that was two years ago, and Prompto says, “None of you are my family. Should I leave you behind when you slow me down?”

The silence that greets the question is heavy and heaving. If he left them, they would be down to one protector where even two doesn’t feel like enough. He’d never do it -- and he’d never do that to Ace -- but these people don’t know that.

But at the stricken looks on some of their faces, the plain horror on others, Prompto relents. He looks down at the dirty blond head nestled against his shoulder, and says, “It can’t be like that anymore. There’s nothing left. All we have is what little we can give each other.”

He thinks of Ignis and Gladio, and how little they have to give each other anymore. How they seem to have nothing to give Prompto anymore. And when that starts to hurt, he thinks of Noctis, and what Noctis would say if Prompto gave up on them, too. What Noctis would say if Prompto gave into the bitter gray feelings always creeping in around his periphery.

And he manages to summon a smile instead.

“So shape up,” he commands without any heat, “and let’s get a move on. Lestallum’s only another hour west. You’ll be home before you know it.”

Ace gives him a companionable nudge as they fall into loose formation again. Most of the civilians don’t seem able or willing to make eye contact. The mother from before approaches Prompto with her hands out, a clear apology and a clear offer in her eyes.

Prompto shakes his head, holding the bundle of boy and coat a little tighter.

“It’s alright,” he says, “I got him.”


	2. Chapter 2

The Leville was used as a shelter immediately after the fall. With so many people flocking to the safety of Lestallum, it only made sense for the hotel to open its doors and offer its wealth of empty rooms. Since then it's been converted into something of a hostel, with multiple bunks in most rooms instead of the standard double beds, and the lobby serves as a soup kitchen Prompto works at every Wednesday.

Ignis lives there permanently, in a private apartment with attached bathroom and kitchenette, and Gladio stays with him when he's in town. It used to be the place Prompto went home to, too, but he hasn’t been back there in months.

There are other shelters now, new buildings rising up beside the old, ones that Prompto helped build, with communal kitchens and bathrooms on each floor. They’re nice, he thinks, and the people made homeless by night and war seem happy with them.

Prompto has a room in one of those shelters, but only because Ace told Dave that Prompto was sleeping in the back of one of the cargo trucks between jobs, and Dave got disproportionately angry and made the arrangements himself.

“I don’t need this much space,” Prompto had tried to tell him, refusing to take the key. “I’m hardly home anyway, Dave, it doesn’t make sense. There are -- families, people with kids. Give them a place with a bed.”

But Dave didn’t care. And Ace didn’t, either, when Prompto looked betrayed at him. And maybe they would have been at an impasse, except at that point Dave played his trump card and threatened to tell Cindy if Prompto didn’t take the damn room.

He took the damn room, but he wasn’t happy about it. He thought about ignoring it out of spite, but then it would just be sitting empty, and it would be even more pointless than having a room in the first place already was.

Prompto’s relieved his friends were so stubborn, now.

“I’m sorry, we just don’t have room,” the harried woman at the door tells him shortly. She runs the group home, a two-story house where a few live-in caretakers look after misplaced or orphaned children. “Go down to the hospital, there should be a care center there that can take him.”

Prompto stares at the door for a moment after she shuts it, and then turns to look at Ace. Ace shakes his head wearily, leaning against the alley wall as Prompto comes back down the porch steps. Each step is a ginger one, so he doesn’t jostle the sleeping kid in his arms more than he has to. Ace looks amused at him, but doesn’t comment.

“I don’t know what to tell you, brother,” he says instead. “Everyone’s stretched about as thin as they can go, and it’s not like there’s a council in place anymore to oversee things like housing and child care.”

“Yeah,” Prompto says, leaning against the wall beside him. “Dave always says our main priority is keeping daemons at bay, politics and law enforcement are worries for another life. But still -- for a kid not to have any place to go -- “

Even Prompto has always had a place to go. An empty house was better than no house at all. Absent parents were better than none. Even now, if he wanted, he could probably go to the apartment he used to live in with Ignis and Gladio. It would be uncomfortable, but he doesn’t think Ignis would turn him away.

Ace looks thoughtful. He says, “My sister might be able to look after him.”

“Your sister is looking after four kids already, only two of which are hers.”

“So take him to the care center, like the lady said. He doesn’t have to be your problem, Prom.”

“That’s exactly why he’s not going to the care center,” Prompto tells him succinctly, shifting the kid’s weight a little. After all the battle machinery he grew accustomed to hauling out of the Armiger and whipping around in a fight, this little guy is nothing. “They’ll look at him like another problem added to the grocery list of things they have to deal with, until they can stick him in a hole somewhere and put a little checkmark by his name and pat themselves on the back for a job well done. Nah, dude. That’s not fair.”

Ace has a complicated look on his face that Prompto doesn’t know how to interpret. "You don't know that's how they'd treat him."

“I mean, it’s not hard to guess. Everyone’s overworked and burnt out. It doesn’t make them bad people, Ace, it just makes them the wrong choice for this. I can keep an eye on him for awhile, until we figure something else out.”

“Are you sure? I mean -- I’m not sayin’ you can’t, you’re stubborn enough to be good at anything you put your mind to, and that includes babysitting -- but you’ve got a lot on your plate as it is.”

Prompto sighs inwardly, but he’s not surprised. For whatever reason, Ace and the rest of them seem to think that Prompto is due for some sort of meltdown. They don’t come out and say as much, and no one is going to turn away help when it’s freely offered, but they give him side-eyes every now and then, like they can see his seams trying to come apart.

He’s fine, though. He likes helping. He’s on the duty roster for pretty much everything, from cooking to carpentry to electric repair, even if the hunters usually claim him for supply runs and escort missions. He’s better when he’s staying busy.

So he slides sideways, enough to bump Ace’s shoulder playfully, trying to shake that look off his face.

“Hey, don’t worry about it. Everything’s cool. Sorry for dragging you out here with me for nothing.”

His friend gives him the driest expression Prompto’s seen in a long time, since Noctis tried to repair one of his shirts during the first leg of their roadtrip and Ignis found the attempt while he was doing the laundry.

“Don’t quit your day job,” the advisor had said, sending Gladio and Prompto into gales of laughter while Noctis sat there looking offended.

The memory makes Prompto laugh a little now, too, at the same time it makes him want to curl into a little ball of misery and nurse a grief that’s still, somehow, raw and aching.

“What’d I tell you about saying sorry to me?” Ace is saying by rote, and Prompto doesn’t miss a beat with his cheeky grin.

“To not to. Sorry.”

“Brat,” says Ace, who is a whole month younger than Prompto. “Get home, then, and I’ll let Dave know about the kid. And I better see the two of you at breakfast, or I'm telling June you've skipped it the last few days."

"Six, you don't have to threaten me. We'll be there." Prompto glances down at the boy he's holding, and adds, "Maybe I'll know his name by then, too. I can introduce you properly and all that."

Ace ruffles his hair, until it sticks up the way it used to when gel was a thing people could worry about. He's got a crooked smile on a face that lends itself well to smiling, dark eyes and dusky skin, the farthest thing from Noctis there could be. Prompto thinks maybe that’s part of why it was so easy to be near him, back when they first met, when everything still hurt and he saw Noct’s ghost in every pair of blue eyes.

Ace says, "I can't wait to meet him," and Prompto knows he means it. 

"Look at you, Mr. Popular," Prompto says to the sleeping boy, making his way down a well-lit street towards home. "You've got two friends already, and you're not even awake yet. You're off to a great start."


End file.
